


Retribution

by entanglednow



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-21
Updated: 2008-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:33:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He looks exactly the way Adam remembers him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retribution

Adam watches Hiro sleep.

It was never his intention. He'd had a very carefully thought out plan for this moment. Flexible enough to allow for any number of possible outcomes. But none of them started like this.

Hiro's glasses have slid down his face, just barely caught on the edge of his nose, making him look young, and lost and _fragile_. People think the past was a simpler time, but they're wrong. It was hard and cold and vicious. You fought for everything you had, and then you fought to keep it. Then you fought some more, because you'd become used to it, and before long you didn't feel alive without it.

When you couldn't fight you ran. The past isn't special. It's long and cold and, more often than not, _ugly_ and Adam has seen a lot of it. They are both children of their time. Hiro especially, Hiro was a product of _this_ time, and when transplanted into the past he'd been so terribly different to anyone Adam had ever known. He'd been everything Adam thought was _fascinating_ , everything he'd once had near-unshakeable faith in. He could see now that it had just been naivety, and a unique perspective of the future; a dissatisfaction with the way things were, and a desire to escape from what he had, a desire for adventure, for excitement. Adam wonders if he even got half of what he wanted from his trip into the past.

He looks _exactly_ the way Adam remembers him. It seems like such a long time ago, but he looks exactly the same, Adam has become so used to being the only one that never changes, that never ages. It seems silly that he _expected_ him to, this is his time after all. This is where he started, where he came back from. And he'd found Adam, whether he intended to or not. He'd found Adam when he'd been searching for _someone else_.

Hiro had wanted, so very badly, to be something he could never be.

But he'd never been ruthless enough. Adam thinks he finally taught him that, and though that hurts in some deep conflicted way, that tastes horribly like loss, it's also _justice_. He likes to think his new-found ruthlessness eats away at him.

Adam lifts a hand, and very carefully lays it down over Hiro's mouth. He wakes instantly on a start, stares up at Adam with a surprise that's almost comical.

"Hello Hiro."

One of Hiro's hands lifts, warm fingers curling round Adam's wrist, though they don't tighten, they don't pull on his skin.

"I'd like to say it was nice to see you again, but since I've clearly snuck into your hotel room, with the express purpose of doing you _harm_ that would probably seem insincere."

Adam presses his hand down just enough for Hiro to feel it, to feel that he could, if he wanted to.

"Perhaps I just wanted to you to feel what it was like to suffocate as well." His fingers shift where they press into the soft skin of Hiro's cheek, and he makes a soft, wounded squeaking noise under the pressure, eyes wide and surprised, then tipped all the way into scared.

Hiro never was very good at spontaneous. Give him an hour or two to work up to _quietly angry_ and he could be almost formidable, but catch him like this, between one moment and the next and he was soft, pliable, confused. Adam has spent a long time learning about him.

He slides his hand free, and for a second the white marks from his fingers stay, fading to nothing while Hiro blinks up at him.

"What do you want?" Hiro asks quietly. It's more curious than angry. Adam would have dearly loved to match some of his own fury against Hiro's, but fate seems to continually thwart him in that regard. He wants a lot of things, some of them complicated some of them simple, and he'd been almost certain which he would demand first, which he would hang over Hiro like a threat and which he would leave until last.

But in that quiet, still moment, what comes out is something entirely different.

"I want you to stop thinking about your precious mission to save mankind, from whatever ridiculous peril its managed to get itself into this week, and tell me honestly how you really felt about burying me alive."

Hiro's surprise is instant, but then it's covered by something more obvious, more righteous.

Hiro shakes his head. "No?"

Adam catches his jaw again, fingers refusing to be anything but sharp.

"No, is not good enough, tell me. Tell me how you could love me one minute and bury me six feet underground the next." That gets a reaction, like he's actually touched something. Hiro's face is suddenly soft and conflicted and horribly readable. "If you really loved me at all."

Hiro makes a noise, something that might be a protest, and Adam's fingers tighten. He thinks perhaps he's afraid of the answer he might get. That, even after centuries, he's not ready for the answer to be no.

"It was centuries for me, how long was it for you, months? weeks?"

The answer is clear enough from the expression Hiro has no ability to hide, something awkward and angry and confused.

"Not long at all," Adam says softly, his fingers soften where the hold the edge of Hiro's jaw and slide free. "I thought up so many ways I could wreak terrible retribution upon you. Some of them granted were unlikely and outlandish, but I was feeling particularly malicious for those long periods. I'm not going to apologise for thinking them, or briefly, for a few, planning them."

Hiro frowns, a strangely hurt expression Adam refuses to find endearing.

"I'm sorry," Hiro says softly.

Adam's fingers tighten on reflex, then relax, a breath away from releasing him entirely.

"I've never been as angry with anyone as I was with you," Adam says flatly, and his enthusiasm for violence is suddenly, _frustratingly_ absent. And he hates it, hates the way it leaves him feeling lost and conflicted, and something that might, if he was any other man, be wounded.

"I am sorry," Hiro says again, and this time it's slower, deeper. "Adam." The name is awkward on his tongue, but the sound of it, the shape of it -

"Don't," he says, but it's barely loud enough to hear. It's nothing like a protest, and he's dipped low enough that he can feel Hiro breathing, and it's all too close and too much, and not what he wanted, not what he intended.

But Hiro doesn't move, he just lays there and blinks at him, and says his name again.

Adam can't resist leaning closer still, mouth pressed briefly against the relaxed curve of Hiro's mouth, and Hiro surprises him by not pushing him away. Not putting his hands up. Not resisting at all, and Adam finds it all but impossible not to kiss him again. Hiro makes a quiet, confused noise that Adam can't read at all, but lets him. The hand that he'd laid over Hiro's mouth strays, without Adam's permission, into the soft edge of his hair, threads through the strands. It's cool where it's been laid on the pillow, but warm near the scalp.

He breathes against the soft line of Hiro's lower lip, before he has the strength to pull himself away. But he gets bare inches before he's stopped.

Hiro's fingers are in his hair, uncertain in the short length of it, his eyes are hurt.

It's been no time at all for him, but it's been years for Adam, years, and it's not fair. It's not fair that he can still do this when Adam wants to be furious.

He wants to hate him.

It would be much easier if he did.


End file.
